Yahoo's Flickr offers 3 free months of its Pro service

Yahoo's holiday gift to the masses is three free months of its Flickr Pro photo and video hosting service, which normally costs $24.95 a year.

Sign up and you get unlimited uploads up to 50MB per photo, unlimited viewing of your photo library, the ability to post photos in as many as 60 groups as well as download high-resolution images and upload and play unlimited HD videos.

It’s a pretty good deal for photo and video enthusiasts considering a free Flickr account normally only lets you upload 300MB every month, only view your most recent 200 photos, post photos in up to 10 groups, download smaller resized images and upload up to two videos a month.

There's a small catch, as Yahoo includes a disclaimer with the deal.

“To avoid abuse of our unlimited storage, we do monitor accounts for excessive usage. Yahoo! limits the number and size of photos allowed from an account within a given timeframe. While our goal is to ensure that everyone benefits from unlimited storage, Flickr is not intended to be used as a content distribution network,” reads the fine print that accompanies the offer.

The free holiday gift is even open to people who don’t yet have a Flickr account. You can sign up using a Yahoo, Facebook or Google account and you don’t need to lay down a credit card number.

After signing on, pick a Flickr screen name and choose the holiday gift. After three months, your account reverts to a free Flickr account -- no strings attached.

It’s a smart move on Yahoo’s part, considering that just a few days ago masses of people were ditching Instagram because of poorly worded updated Terms of Use it announced last week. The photo sharing service later reversed course and said it would reword its policies, although as PCWorld’s Ian Paul pointed out, Instagram's older terms are more liberal than the newer version it wanted to implement.

Christina DesMarais

Christina is a contributor to media outlets such as Forbes.com, Inc.com, PCWorld.com, Auto Trader and The Minneapolis Star Tribune. She writes about a myriad of topics including technology, the automotive industry and health and fitness. Her talents outside of writing include photography, getting people to talk (although that certainly helps with writing) and gardening.More by Christina DesMarais